Toyota's Two-Faced Stance on Climate Change

Toyota's Two-Faced Stance on Climate Change

As the old saying goes: “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” Or in the case of Toyota: “You can’t have your green and fight it too.”

With a well-earned reputation as a leader in the development of fuel efficient cars it boggles my mind that Toyota continues to be a supporter of the US Chamber of Commerce - an organization that is leading the charge against President Obama’s clean energy agenda.

Other big supporters of the Chamber of Commerce have been distancing themselves from the organization over their archaic standpoint on the issue of climate change.

“we fundamentally disagree with the US Chamber of Commerce on the issue of climate change and their recent action challenging the EPA is inconsistent with our view that climate change is an issue in need of urgent action.”

“Exelon is so committed to climate legislation that Rowe [Exelon’s CEO] announced during today’s speech that Exelon will not be renewing its membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce due to the organization’s opposition to climate legislation.”

If an energy producer and a shoe company are willing to take such a strong stance, one would reason that Toyota, a company that heavily markets itself as a “sustainable mobility” company, would have led the exodus from the US Chamber. Instead we see all sorts of big green talk from the auto-giant, like:

“We support environmental programs that educate and mobilize people to reduce their environmental footprint.”

“As an auto manufacturer, Toyota believes that “sustainable mobility” can be achieved through advanced technologies, key partnerships and creative people who are willing to take on this most important challenge.”

It goes on and on like this throughout Toyota’s website and I applaud them for putting their money where there mouth is on things like their Together Green program. But it all rings just a little too hollow when you know that at the same time they’re doing all this “green” work, they’re still a big backer of the US Chamber of Commerce who continues to be a major lobby against action on climate change.

At the least it seems to me to be financially backwards to fund one group that is advancing environmental causes while at the same time funding those opposed to those very same things. At the most, it makes me wonder whether all of Toyota’s “green” image in nothing more than a clever ruse.

If Toyota is genuinely committed to sustainability as they say they are, then they can can take their lead from Nike, Exelon and others and stop supporting the US Chamber and their attack on the Obama administration’s clean energy and climate change reforms. If they don’t leave the US Chamber, then we know where their motivations truly lie.

Why let Steve McIntyre show the world that the “Team” is using bogus statistics to alarm the world and cause huge waste of public monies? Why did China not prove the USA was blowing smoke, it would have knocked wind out of the USA ego. Yes, I heard their minister dismiss the US findings, but he was too timid for what is needed to stop this hoax.

Oh well, leave it to an intrepid Canadian.. now where have I heard that before.. oh.. William Stevenson, the real 007 from Winnipeg..

Your by-line should be Rip Van Winkle if you think that Steve McIntyre is still relevant (or ever was). Everything you have posted here in your little flurry over the past week or so is based on lame, ancient, and completely discredited codswollop from the deniers’ camp. The world has moved on. Get over it. Harping on about McIntyre is a dead givaway that you are stuck in the past and haven’t been paying attention FORYEARS.

AGW is a political ideology, so 30,000,000 people who listen to Beck are being given political ammunition..

That is why AGW is so low on voters lists of priorities that it almost was off the bottom of the chart.

That is why Kerry talks about energy security, not climate change, except to throw it out as a tidbit for the political base at the end of his press comments.

The AGW dog is not hunting!

I am all for an energy policy for the USA. It is long overdue. Just don’t try to tax carbon to give money to Al Gore and his 3 billion fund.(OK, we already see the car company Al Gore backs(and invested in?) got 1/2 a billion.

Such greed from the left wing! Of course, Al Gore was rich as his dad owned a big chunk of Occidental petroleum, but hey, it is fun to be rich.. you get to fly private jets, own humungous houses, and to have writers write books based on your babble about science. Better than a real job!

A 100 million here, 100 million there, and pretty soon you have some decent pocket change!(It is very necessary to keep the AGW dog hunting)

“Ed”, you are making a fool of yourself. I understand that as a self-described retiree with a lot of time on your hands you’re looking for attention and something to fill the hours, but really, stick to walking your cat.

You’ve officially become white noise as far as I’m concerned, so this is the last response you’ll ever get from me.

…considering that Steve McIntyre did a bit of cherry picking himself:
he replaced one dataset, without testing its validity (just to name one issue: its data does not fit the measured increased surface temperatures close to that area)

He also keeps on claiming the hockeystick-shape is a result of the analysis, but neglects to inform his ‘public’ of various monovalent measurements (no nasty CPS or PCA needed) showing the SAME hockeystick shape.

The reason deniers should be kept far away from the data is that they either don’t know how to deal with it, or deal with it in a scientific dishonest way.

See also http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/hey-ya-mal/

Why should I discuss any statistics? It’s not about the statistics! And to complain about realclimate as “propaganda” and then refer to WUWT is just plain idiocy. Which, of course, is a recurring theme in your posts here…

Of course, WUWT allows alternative views: any and all alternative views that contradict global warming (to various extents). Knowingly trying to mislead me, huh! What does that make you, according to your own claim?

And with a bit of truth from Professor Mojib Latif, they fire away.. not pretty reading, but it sure influences people..

BECK: This is the leading climate modeling guy for the IPCC.

GRAY: I got – I got his name here –

BECK: Get his name – Stu will know it.

GRAY: – in just a second.

BECK: And he has backed out now and said, “We were wrong. We’re going into 30 years of cooling right now.”

GRAY: At least.

BECK: Yeah, at least. And that’s not – that’s not the sunspot guy. The sunspot is the other – that the – that the Earth is now in its cooling period because the sunspot activity. Do you remember we were with that sunspot guy –

BURGUIERE: Yeah.

BECK: – and had dinner, and do you remember his look in his eyes? He was just was like, my life is over –

BURGUIERE: Yeah.

BECK: – because I – he’s like, I’m the leading –

BURGUIERE: Astrophysicist.

BECK: – astrophysicist. I’m one of the leading astrophysicists in the world, and he said I can’t get tenure anywhere.

GRAY: Because he was saying it was sunspots.

BECK: Didn’t he have a Nobel Prize coming his way or something – he was up for a Nobel Prize?

BURGUIERE: I’m not sure about that, but he’s at – he’s at Harvard.

GRAY: Well, you’d have to be crazy to say that the sun has something to do with the warming of this planet when you – when we all know it’s CO2.

BECK: He said to us – this was like four years ago, five years ago – he’s like, it is sunspots, it is solar activity, that’s what it is. And he said we’re, in a few years, we’re gonna go into a relative quiet period of the sun. He said and then it’s over.

BURGUIERE: He did say that. That’s amazing, you’re right.

GRAY: It’s Mojib Latif of Germany’s Leibniz Institute.

BECK: Mojib Latif.

BURGUIERE: It’s my favorite Latif –

GRAY: Mojib Latif.

BECK: You don’t know him?

BURGUIERE: – of the Latif brothers.

GRAY: You don’t know him?

BECK: He’s one of the leading guys for the IPCC.

GRAY: Big proponent. Yeah. Yeah.

BECK: And look him up, Stu. I’m surprised you didn’t know him.

BURGUIERE: Off the top of my head the name kind of sounds familiar, but –

GRAY: He says – he says that he’s conceded that the Earth has not warmed for nearly a decade and that we are likely entering one or even two decades or more during which temperatures cool. I mean – and then you couple that with the sunspot report that you were just talking about, and it’s madness what they’re trying to shove down our throats.

And so, they know there’s very little time and they’ve got this Copenhagen thing coming up, and they thought they’d have it all wrapped up by now – if they just had one more searing hot summer.

From the September 22 edition of ABC Radio Networks’ The Sean Hannity Show:

HANNITY: As a matter of fact, one of Obama’s – one of Al Gore’s most prominent allies in this global warming hysterical movement has just pulled off – pulled the rug out from the former vice president and now says the world more likely faces decades of global cooling. I guess Gore didn’t see this little tidbit that was printed.

Professor Mojib Latif is one of the leading climate modelers in the world, and he’s a recipient of several international climate study prizes, lead author of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He’s now contributed – he’s contributed over the years significantly to these reports that have stated unequivocally that manmade greenhouse emissions are causing the planet to warm dangerously.

Last week in Geneva at the UN’s World Climate Conference, an annual gathering of the so-called scientific consensus on manmade global warming climate change – oops. He argued that the Earth has not warmed for nearly a decade, and that we are likely entering one or even two decades during which temperatures actually cool. He pointed out that the Atlantic, particularly the North Atlantic, has been cooling in recent years, and it looks set to continue a cooling phase for 24 years.

[…]

HANNITY: The science is not unchallenged; it is challenged. And even leading environmental extremists that have been, you know – you know, sending out these dire warnings, they’re now contradicting themselves.

for the record:

From Latif’s August 31 presentation at the World Climate Conference – 3:

LATIF: What you see here is just the globally averaged temperature during the 20th century. And you can clearly identify the long-term warming trend, and we all believe that this long-term warming trend is anthropogenic in nature, is manmade. However, you see also a lot of fluctuations superimposed on this trend, interannual, as Tim has pointed out, but also decadal scale variations.

For instance, from the ’40s to the ’70s, the temperatures dropped and some discussion was going on whether or not we are heading towards a new ice age. And most recently, in the recent decades, we had quite a strong increase in temperature. And now the discussion is basically going on whether this reflects some kind of acceleration of global warming.

Now, I have four points I would like to discuss. First of all, why decadal prediction? Second, the mechanisms of decadal variability. Third – oops – what is the potential? What is the decadal predictability potential? And finally, the challenges. What does it need to realize the decadal predictability potential that actually exists?

All right, so, first point: Why decadal prediction? Now, people who know me, at least my German colleagues, know that I do a lot of media work, OK. There is almost no day in the year when I’m not called by some media person, OK. And so, they basically think about global warming as a kind of slowly evolving process and a monotonic process, OK – so each year is warmer than the preceding year.

However, we all know there is variability, OK, and this variability may look like this. This has been actually derived from the 20th century by just removing some exponential fit, and the two, of course, superimposed, OK, and then, the real evolution of the globally averaged temperatures would look like this. And then, you see right away, OK, it may well happen that you enter a decade, or maybe even two, you know, when the temperature cools, all right, relative to the present level, all right.

And then, you know, I know what’s going to happen. You know, I will get, you know, millions of phone calls, you know – “What’s going on?” “So is global warming disappearing, you know?” “Have you lied on us, you know?” So, and, therefore, this is the reason why we need to address this decadal prediction issue.

[…]

LATIF: If we look at the next 100 years, there are different uncertainties, OK. So AR-4, the last IPCC report, basically was the boundary force problem, so, it – the uncertainty arose mostly from the scenario uncertainty and from the model bias, OK. However, if you look at short lead times, right, then you see that the internal variability is really the dominating uncertainty in the climate change forecasts or, slash, projections. And especially on interannual and decadal timescales, this is true.

Now, however, we should also keep in mind that it may happen some unexpected events like volcanic eruptions or anomalous solar radiation, so there is another uncertainty, OK, however, which we probably cannot predict. … We all believe that the long-term trend is anthropogenic in nature.

[…]

LATIF: Everybody who knows me is aware of the fact that I am definitely not one of the skeptics, OK. And if my name was not Mojib Latif, my name would be global warming, all right. However, you know, we have to ask the nasty questions ourselves, all right, or some other people will do it.

would be the best term to describe you, Hannity, Gray, Burguiere, and Beck.

In his presentation, Latif mentions that there may be periods of 1-2 decades of hardly any warming, he doesn’t say it will be this period. In fact, in his articles he proposes that warming will go REALLY fast the next 10 next years (2010 onwards), possibly followed by another decade of slow warming (2020 onwards).

He actually does refer to people like you, who simply are inable to distinguish the natural variability (variation around the mean) of short-term ‘climate’, versus an underlying warming trend of long-term climate. How to explain it to you? Well, Mojib, don’t even try, some people are beyond reason.

it’s from drudge. The mayor or governor or whatever he is - is just all keyed up about trying to get the Olympics for Tokyo and he figures global warming might help the cause - he wants a “green” Olympic games.

No such thing. The only “green” olympics is a canceled olympics. Olympics are about commerce and commerce is about CO2. At least it is at the moment.

I`m afraid I`m not following you Kevin - Toyota`s two-faced because of something that it hasn`t done? That something being something that no others in the US Chamber of commerce have done, other than three firms last week?

And is everyone else in AmCham also two-faced? Why does Toyota get special criticism?

While putting pressure on other members of AmCham is a good idea, why not tell us more about who else are members, and a strategy?

I would think that Toyota is unlikely to leave the chamber, but would be interest in pushing for an internal change of direction.

This is a wonderful site. I love driving and buying cars. Toyota has always been my first choce. I love toyot cars as the comfort level of this cars is very high and the service provided by the company cannot be compared with any other car dealers. I gained very useful information about toyot cars by this site. Thanks for such helpful information.
====================================
alex
used toyota landcruiser

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.

Keep In Touch

Every good magician knows that the key to success is misdirecting the audience. You have to draw everyone’s attention away from your ultimate goal in order to perform the trick. Politics is no different, and one of the greatest misdirections in recent memory has been pulled off by the fossil fuel industry.

While most of the environmental movement was (rightfully) focusing attention on stopping the Keystone XL tar sands export pipeline from crossing over one of the most vital aquifers in the U.S., the dirty energy industry was quietly building a network of...